My sister Sophie leaves in the morning to work for two years in Ethiopia. Please be in prayer for her as she travels and gets settled. It will be exciting to see what God has for her.

Knowing what you’re about

Moving ahead without fear

Plugging into the strength to carry on

In case anyone hasn’t yet noticed the link in my left sidebar, my cookbook is already available for pre-order! It doesn’t release til September, but I will be getting a few copies ahead of time, and during the month of August I’ll be doing a giveaway every week and talking about it more. So stay tuned! And if you’d like to read the very first review of the book, visit Merlot Mudpies.

: Family Feasts for $75 a Week

This evening I was trying to think of something quick and different to make for dinner.  Here’s what I came up with.  Since the salmon is already cooked, the topping for the pasta can easily be made in the time it takes to boil the pasta.

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Italian Salmon Pasta

Preparation Time: 20 minutes

Serves 6

Ingredients

1 lb pasta, any kind  (I used corkscrew)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, sliced in long thin slivers

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small zucchini, halved length wise and sliced

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved (or one large tomato, chopped)

1/2 cup sliced black olives

1 15-ounce can salmon, bones discarded and liquid reserved

1 cup Italian salad dressing (low fat is fine)

salt and pepper to taste

Begin by putting a large pot of salted water on to boil.  Cook pasta al dente per package directions. While water is heating, slice onion, tomatoes, zucchini, and olives.  While pasta cooks, make the sauce.  In a heavy skillet set on high, add 2 tablespoons olive oil.  When skillet is good and hot, add onions and cook til they are limp and there are some browned bits on them, 3-4 minutes.   Add garlic and zucchini and cook a couple more minutes on high. To the same skillet add Italian dressing, tomatoes, olives,  salmon, and reserved liquid from the salmon.  Cook on medium heat for 3-4 more minutes, or until mixture is just heated through.  When pasta is cooked, drain it and return to the pot.  Toss with the salmon and vegetables and serve.

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If you happen to have leftovers of this pasta, it can be served cold the next day, adding a little extra salad dressing just before serving.

: quick summer dinner

…simply give them a tub of water, a heap of doll clothes, and a kid-height clothesline.

The other day I told someone in complete honesty that I love holding my new camera almost as much as I love the pictures that I get with it.  I love the weight of it, the way my fingers curl around the body of it, the ’snick’ as I rotate a different lens onto the camera body, and yes, I still lovelovelove that wonderful solid click as I take a picture.

The results that come from my lovely camera vary, however.  My handsome hubby blames it on my refusal to use the camera’s auto settings.  I  suspect he’s tired of hearing me wail when I realize that I’ve flubbed yet another set of pictures.  I, however, am determined to master this thing.  In my mind, I won’t have it mastered until I can figure out my own light settings and control my depth of field and really be able to tweak the settings on the camera to make a picture turn out the way I want it to.

I’m FAR from that goal, frustratingly so.  However I am certain that I have a better understanding of the camera than when I first bought it a couple months ago.   So I thought I’d share some of the biggest discoveries that have made my pictures better just a little more often.

1. EXPOSURE TRIANGLE

I did a lot of reading about the ‘exposure triangle’ of photography:  ISO, shutter speed, and aperture.  Some of the best explanations came from MeraKoh’s video, Beyond the Green Box,  and the wonderful Digital Photography School website.  It took a lot of reading, playing around, and practicing — I’ve taken literally thousands of pictures since I got the camera a couple months ago — but I’ve finally got a pretty good handle on how to increase or decrease the amount of light in a shot that is over or underexposed.

2. HISTOGRAM

When I bought the camera, I was frustrated because it was set to show the histogram of each picture right next to the picture.  I didn’t know the purpose of the squiggly little graph, and I was aggravated that it took up space in the viewing frame.  I wanted to see bigger pictures, not squiggly lines.  As I used the camera, however, I came up against the limitations of that viewing screen. All too often, a picture that looked great out the camera turned out the be wildly over or under exposed on the computer.   I reluctantly googled histograms, and found some great explanatory articles.  To my relief, I learned that histograms aren’t all that hard to read.  Now I find them to be hugely valuable in evaluating my light settings, especially outdoors where it is darned hard to even SEE the pictures on the viewing screen.

3. AF-ON

OK, I am almost embarrassed to admit to this, but I didn’t learn til a week ago that it is possible to use autofocus when I have my dSLR camera on full manual settings.  I really thought that ‘manual’ meant I had to do everything myself.  So before last week, I’d get my settings right, and then hurriedly try to get the camera focused by hand before my subjects wandered off.  Frustrating, esp when you’re shooting little kids.  Then I got clued in to the AF-ON button.  Touch it right before you take a picture, and it will focus on whatever’s in your focus area.  Easy peasy.  I can’t believe how much easier that makes picture-taking.

4. KELVIN SCALE

The other day I took some biking pictures that turned out fun in a lot of ways.   But the pale cast of most of the pictures left me a bit disappointed.  I wanted vivid colors, but the overcast light that day dulled the colors down.  I picked the brains of a knowledgeable friend of ours, and learned about a dimension of photography I had missed.  Turns out there’s something called the Kelvin scale that grades the warmth or coolness of various types of light. Playing with your camera’s white balance allows you to inject more warmth into pictures on dull grey days.  That’s what I should have done to jazz up those bike pictures the other day.

Thanks to Israel from Avalanche Photography for cluing me into most of this!

And just for fun, here’s some of the best of what I took recently.

: beginner tips, dSLR camera, photography

Joshua 1:9

Today:

– party with ‘just us’ which includes newlyweds Amanda and Ben, plus 2 friends of Erika

–filling 1000+ water balloons in prep for an epic battle tonight

–cranking up an ice cream maker that we haven’t used for 10 years

–making peanut butter pie and blackberry crisp

–BBQ’ing burgers and firecracker shrimp

–hanging out by a twinkle-lit pool for fireworks, chatting, splashing, and counting our blessings

Outdoor amphitheater, hills wrapping around, stage cupped in the center. Already, an hour before the preshow is scheduled to begin, the shady side of the amphitheater is covered with blankets and the sunny side is beginning to fill. We arrive and find my sister has saved us seats in the shade.  We spread blankets by her.  Younger kids gang up with cousins.  Older ones hang out with sister and her friends.   My sis is on the brink of leaving for Ethiopia to work for two years, so we talk about the extra baggage she will have to pay for, her progress in packing, and whether or not it would be worth it to pay an extra $120 to ship her guitar there.  I vote yes, my argument being that music is good for the soul.

Musicians play on stage, words indistinct with the sound system cranked not quite loud enough.  Shade creeps forward and the evening cools a little.  More people pour in, and the roar of many people talking gets louder.  Kids walk around with snow cones, inciting a powerful thirst in others.   We take a break in chatting to take kids first to the drinking fountain, then to get ($3 each!) snow cones, then to the bathroom.

The music gets louder, more encompassing, more skilled  — church worship teams in the valley, some blessed with performers we’ve heard on the radio.  Hillsong music is a common theme and is played with various degrees of skill by various groups. My 17 year old son rolls his eye indulgently at me each time another Hillsong song comes on.   I’ve played it and played it at home and he is rather tired of it, preferring instead Relient K and Skillet.

A woman behind me raises her hands in the air, eyes closed, during several songs, oblivious to noisy conversation swirling around her.  A plain looking middle aged woman in front of me stands up and performs graceful, gorgeous sign language during several other songs, body swaying in time with the music.  I am enchanted by her.  I sing along with a few songs, voice barely audible even to my sister sitting next to me.

I get text messages from Erika, just off work, and then newlyweds Amanda and Ben, who arrive and want to know where we are sitting.  We direct them our way.  The patchwork of blankets on the ground around us snugs up, and we scootch over, glad to make space for our new arrivals.

My oldest kids are clumped together, chatting companionably.  My sons alternate drumming on their knees with trying to sneak bits of trash into the hood of their sister’s shirt. They move on to engineering a tiny basket out of a cup for a helium balloon to carry off into the sky.  I veto the idea of filling the cup with water, not liking the idea of it dribbling on spectators as it rises.  That notion is exactly why my sons so love the idea, but they goodnaturedly dump out the water- over their sisters, who brush it off with equal humor.

An announcer rouses everyone to cheer for members of various branches of the military who are being honored tonight.  men and women all over the crowd rise, some bashful and some dignified as clapping and cheers surround them.   Up on stage a group of young people have just decided to enter the military and are sworn in.

Up in the sky, a man with a parachute jumps out of a plane and drifts down towards us along with a truly enormous American flag.  A woman sings the Star Spangled Banner and we pledge allegiance and for a minute I think of the blessing I have living where I do.  Most of my kids have to be reminded to put their hands over their hearts and hush up, however.

When Brandon Heath comes on, the music is louder and more people are paying attention, standing and clapping at times.  I realize I like quite a few of the songs he sings.  I catch the eyes of some of my younger kids and grin as they sing along with songs they’ve heard on the radio many times.  Fireworks are part of his rather impressive stage show, and my big boys are dancing by the end.  The atmosphere all around is a party, plain and simple, and I feel utterly blessed to be surrounded by some of my favorite people, and knowing that my kids are having just as much fun as I am.

By the time Brandon Heath comes off stage, it is getting dark, almost time for fireworks.   Kids all over wield glow sticks and light sabers.  Some, including a couple of my kids (with their own money), have sprung for fake teeth that glow in crazily brilliant colors.  They can’t outshine the fireworks when finally they come, though, lighting up the night with satisfying thunder and brilliance.  Adults and children alike are awed.   I get the fun of holding my 2 year old nephew on my lap.  He points out each new burst with an excited “OH!!!!” that never wanes in its fervor for the whole 15 minute show.

When finally the show is over, we shake out our blankets and gather our people and shuffle with the crowd out to the dark parking lot, where it will be another hour before we even make it out of the lot to the road.   But the glow of a lovely evening stays with me and lasts til we get home, and the memory of the fun makes it almost certain that when the God and Country Rally rolls around next July, we will once again be there.